[Illustration: The author at the long-neglected grave of Robert Heller, in Mt. Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia, U. S. A. From a photograph in the Harry Houdini Collection.] From this array of facts it will be seen that second sight is and always has been a matter of well-drilled phrases or signals, prearranged rotation of articles, well-built apparatus or well-trained confederates, but never a feat of actual thought-transferrence. Some of Robert-Houdin's ardent supporters insist that in claiming the invention or discovery of second sight, the French conjurer was merely an unconscious plagiarist, having stumbled upon, quite by accident, a trick which he did not know that others had offered before him. Such a statement is illogical and absurd. Books of magic to which Robert-Houdin had access and which he admits having read describe the trick in a more or less crude form. Pinetti, whose tricks were fully described to Robert-Houdin by his old friend Torrini, used the second-sight mystification with excellent effect. Robert-Houdin could not have been ignorant of its existence as a trick. In making the claim to its discovery in his "Memoirs" he simply trusted to the ignorance of the reading public in the history of magic. According to programmes and newspaper clippings in my collection, Philip Breslaw was the first conjurer to feature second sight in his performance. Breslaw was a clever German who so established himself in the hearts of amusement-loving Englishmen that he remained in England for forty years, dying in Liverpool in 1803. In 1781, while playing at Greenwood's Rooms, Haymarket, London, he announced as Part One of his entertainment: "Mr. Breslaw will exhibit his new magical deceptions, Letters, Medals, Dice, Pocket pieces, Rings, etc., etc., and particularly communicate the thoughts of any person to another without the assistance of speech or writing." Pinetti comes next as an eminent presenter of second sight. Between these two well-known conjurers there may have been various unimportant, unchronicled performers who made use of Breslaw's trick, but they have no place in the history of magic. The trick appeared on a Pinetti programme at the Royal Haymarket, London, England, December 1st, 1784, almost sixty-two years before Robert-Houdin presented it as his original invention. [Illustration: Clipping from the London _Post_, December 1st, 1784, in which Pinetti featured second sight. From the Harry Houdini Collection.] The London _Morning Post and Daily Advertiser_ of December 1st, 1784, contains the above advertisement, reproduced from my collection. The talking code employed by Pinetti was not original with him, as it dates back to the automaton worked by a concealed confederate who controlled the piston for the mechanical figure or pulled the strings to manipulate the dancing coins or moving head. It was novel only in its application to the supposed thought-transferrence by a human being instead of an automaton.